Green Parties

Posted on Biodiversity, Children and Nature, christian faiths, Church Responsibility, Green Parties, National Parks, Nature Conservation Ethics, Nature Conservation Philosophy, People for nature, Religion and radical conservation, religious organisations, Uncategorized, wilderness reserve

Religions of the world – AND CONSERVATION

When I was a child of four it was a wondrous thing to look up at a giraffe. From the advantage of being small, the size of these beautiful animals seemed to tower towards the sky. Elegant in posture and stance, with friendly large eyes,that looked down from a great distance, they seemed to suggest that they were much wiser than they seemed. In the world of children these are nothing less than magical animals. May they always be with us.

And now I read that their populations are collapsing: poaching being a major factor. Until now we were keenly aware that rhino and elephants were sustaining pressure. But giraffes? They were never in the news as endangered. That has changed. And what if they become extinct? Would it matter? Clearly, from the world of children, a wonderful animal would have been removed: leaving the lives of children the poorer for that.

So what about the great religions of the world in all of this?

Conservation programmes across the world are not protecting species. Why? Because an affection for wildlife is not there. Yes, we may not want to see a species pass to extinction but we are not exercised on the issue to want to DO something to save it. I can speak bluntly of this because I have been involved in conservation all my life; a life, I suspect, that is longer than most reading this blog. And yes, there are wonderfully dedicated people around the planet who care for nature with a passion. But the problem is one of numbers. Conservation has become the politics of numbers. Unless people, in their millions, offer a voice towards conservation, we will continue in this inadequate drip-feed approach to conserving species. Yet, how are we to reach the millions that are needed?

The great religions in the world have the ears of the hundreds of millions of their followers. They also have great cathedrals and mosques, churches and temples that could readily be used to reach out to their faithful on matters of nature conservation. The founders of these great religions discovered enlightenment in wild places. Such places appear to hold spiritual qualities that can benefit all of us, provided they remain intact. Therefore, once a year, could the spiritual leaders of these great religions not preach to their people of the value of preserving nature? That way the thinking of hundreds of millions of people will enter the debate on how best to prevent the draining away of so many species into extinction.

We have tried the other; dedicated groups across the world trying to do what they can against the indifference of the many. And it has not worked. The Red Books of extinctions are proof of that.

The dedicated associations, clubs and individuals who care, with a passion, for nature might consider this and now focus their energies on persuading the religious leaders, that they know, to take up this thinking. They, in turn,to be encouraged to generate a ground-swell that will move up the chain to the highest spiritual leaders that they would embrace this idea for conservation, and make it possible that the places of worship under their care would, for one day a year, be used in this fashion. We need their help. At this stage we must think in such radical ways if we are ever to instill a global ethic for conservation.

Members of conservation clubs and associations around the world, and public conservation bodies, entrusted to the preservation of species, might wish to debate this idea. We have tried everything else – and yet we lose species. This loss will continue unless people, in their tens of millions, have a change of perception of the value of wildlife to all of us.

Patrick.

Leave a comment Posted on Biodiversity, christian faiths, Green Parties, National Parks, Nature Conservation Ethics, Nature Conservation Philosophy, People for nature, religious organisations, wilderness reserve

Are polythene tunnels a danger to bumble bees?

I have a 50 foot walk-in polythene tunnel with doors at each end. I grow strawberries in this tunnel. Bees of all sorts are to be encouraged and they more than oblige in pollinating the strawberries. But I have noticed a number of dead bumble bees recently. Notwithstanding the news of a sickness that is killing bees I wonder, in this case, is there a contributing reason for bees dying in polythene tunnels, or at least in my tunnel?

I wonder is heat stress a factor?  I note that the bees freely fly in through the open doors and do their good work among the strawberry plants. But when it is time to leave a problem seems to arise. The bees fly towards the roof of the tunnel expecting to make their way out into the light by that means. Endlessly they push against the polythene here looking for a way out. At the height of summer the heat in a tunnel can be surprisingly high which must add to their distress. This constant searching for a way back out of the tunnel in most cases leads the bees to bump along the roof to eventually find themselves trapped against the vertical one to two feet of polythene above either of the doors. If they would only drop down that two feet they would find their way out the door again.

I have found several dead or dying bumble bees in the tunnel and wonder would this be from their exhaustive efforts in trying to escape from the tunnel? (Honey bees don’t seem to have a difficulty and fly out through the doors without problems.) If this is indeed the case tunnel design that allows an open flap above each door that could be buttoned up in winter might be helpful.

Have any others observed this to be a problem? I would welcome your views.

Polythene tunnel designers might wish to consider this.

Patrick

Leave a comment Posted on Biodiversity, christian faiths, Green Parties, National Parks, Nature Conservation Ethics, Nature Conservation Philosophy, People for nature, religious organisations, wilderness reserve

GREEN PARTIES – and the missing step!

The aspirations of green political parties, of whatever hue, are based on the premise that people, voters, in influential numbers, will right away subscribe to their policies as being wholesome and good and altogether sensible. Economic downturns have lain this in ruins.

Many years ago I recall a headline in a Florida newspaper – to hell with ecology I want my job. And that is where people, in large numbers, now are. Greens may wish to believe otherwise – but check your polls.

Social changes can suddenly be ‘of their time’ and people in great numbers will willingly flow towards these new ideas with little or no persuasion necessary. Green parties have not yet had that good fortune. Their messages are largely stillborn: not yet of their time.They have had to struggle to be heard and have often stood accused as anti-developers and anti-jobs and anti-tradition. None of which is helpful in furthering a green case.

Carts before horses are at issue here. If green party policies are to be enthusiastically embraced by a scale of numbers that would make a difference then a shift towards a clearer appreciation of the natural world must first be in place. Green politicians have commonly set out their stalls in front of largely indifferent customers not yet willing to ascribe to what is being offered. And what is on offer has been bought into by a disappointing few. That is the dilemma of all green parties. The soil has not yet been adequately tilled out of which green party crops of ideas can grow and flourish.

Nature is its own best salesperson. It has wonderful stories to intrigue us yet the storytellers are too few in number. She displays exquisite beauty of such a nature as to compel us to simply stand and stare and wonder at it all and at our own small existence in all of it. She continually reveals to us her ingenious and inventive mechanisms of coping and surviving and thriving in the most challenging of environments. She discloses for us varied and wonderful interlocking processes that her flowers might be brought the pollen they require. The exquisite love-dances of birds leading to extraordinary architectural nests that young might follow them onto the endless timeline is one more manifestation of the magnificence of this planet. The world is indeed a place of irrepressible wonder whether it be demonstrated in the beguiling behaviour of South African cave crickets or the spore-dispersing structures of soft sphagnum moss.

Centuries of poetry, numerous spiritual texts, and the gifts of musicians in creating ethereal music are all attestations to the wonderful forces of nature that lie all about us – if the rest of us could but see.

Widespread appreciation of the silence of falling snow, the sounds of the movements of different leaves under restless winds, the million songs of meadow insects, need first to be in place before green party movements can hope to succeed in any meaningful sense. Only then will an effective green party’s ‘time have come’.

A quotation here might show how far many of us are now uncoupled from associations with any part of nature. It is a quote from the Lakota:

‘In relation to white minds . . . I have often noticed white boys gathering on a city street, jostling and pushing each other in a foolish manner. . . . their natural faculties neither seeing, hearing nor feeling the varied life that surrounds them.There is about them no awareness . . . and it is this dullness that gives ugly mannerisms full play.’ 

With impoverished awareness as this general to a society how can any green party hope to make progress in the face of such strange detachment? Green parties cannot hope to move from their present place of paralysis until this poverty of connectedness is rectified. No headwind is possible without first addressing this deficiency. If we, as a society, are to be persuaded to conduct our lives and our businesses in a manner that does not put nature in harm’s way it will require the majority of us to be much more fully aware of the beauty and mystery of nature upon which we all depend.

Green parties have been tacking, as best they can, in the choppy waters in the wake of others. If they are to become powerful players in political systems they need to focus their considerable passion and energy on leading societies towards affection for nature so that citizens, in the end, will want to instinctively do what is right by nature. Achieve this and green parties will succeed in becoming sustained and powerful political forces. Then their time will indeed have come. But without this change in society green parties will continue to be viewed as unrealistic, unpractical, anti-business and anti-jobs.

Greens might want to consider this and review their thinking.

(As an after-note on this – those interested might want to read the blog entitled – A Call to all Religions to now Embrace Nature Conservation. This, if taken to heart and acted upon by established churches, would go a long way in helping green parties achieve their ambitions.)

Patrick